What if you thought of ISIS as a brand, much as you’d think of Rolex, Ferrari, Louis Vuitton as brands. That may sound crazy until you see how Christianity has been destroyed as a brand. People in the U.S. are less likely to be Christians because being religious is associated with being low class and uneducated.
Ask yourself this: How many “upper class” people admit to being Christians?
Now think about the United States Marine videos you’ve seen. The few, The proud, The Marines. Even though the Marines is ostensibly a maritime fighting force, U.S. Marine is also a brand.
The Marine brand is exclusive. Not everyone can be a marine. Only the few and proud can.
Effective branding is associating your brand with youth, beauty, strength, wealth – in a word, status.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 8, 2016
ISIS currently runs an effective marketing campaign.
While many ISIS videos don’t rise above simple battlefield films, the highest-end productions, made by the group’s al-Hayat Media Center, are glossy, carefully scripted and designed to recruit Westerners. One of the most prominent videos—“Al-Ghuraba (The Stranger): The Chosen Few of Different Lands”—follows a popular 12-step screenwriting technique called the “Hero’s Journey,” first formulated by a Disney executive and familiar to any “Star Wars” fan.
After the film’s protagonist, Andre Poulin, decides to give up an idyllic life in Canada to follow the call of adventure, the video tracks his journey as he arrives in Syria, takes the name of Abu Muslim, joins ISIS, and dies fighting for the group.
If you want to destroy an idea, you destroy its brand. Think about what a laughing stock “conservative media” has become. We associated the brand of National Review with cuckolds.
National Review is associated with cuckolds. That was devastating. The brand of "conservatives" was destroyed. That's why they *hate* cuck.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 5, 2016
Produce videos showing ISIS soldiers acting like clowns. I thought this was a parody video.
This video makes ISIS as a brand look clownish. It’s highly effective counter-marketing. I hope ISIS releases more videos like this.
You could also release videos showing ISIS fighters with small boys sitting on their laps and allowing the viewer to infer that ISIS is full of pedophiles.
- Remember when U.S. Senator “Pedo” Ben Sasse was going to run for President? I ended that with one article.
Even showing ISIS soldiers sitting around being bored would be more effective than our current foreign policy strategy.
Show ISIS recruits cleaning toilets. Yes, that would work.
‘ISIS made me clean the toilets… and my iPod didn’t work’: How disenchanted Islamic fanatics are returning home because jihad isn’t as glamorous as they hoped.
Scott Adams suggested we could defeat ISIS with a hoax:
The hoax would take the form of a fake video of a meeting involving high-level ISIS leaders. The video would appear to be taken on a smartphone by one of the other ISIS leaders in a war-battered room somewhere in Syria. In the fake video, actors pretend to be ISIS leaders bragging about how they take advantage of the young, stupid recruits.
The conversation might include various leaders saying such things as…
– Hahahaha! We send idiots to slaughter so we can enjoy their sisters and mothers. Only winners get to spread their genes.
Adams’ idea is another way to destroy the ISIS brand. A hoax making foot soldiers look like useful idiots would destroy the ISIS brand.
An ISIS fighter would not be among the few and the proud. An ISIS fighter would not be a young man following the hero’s journey.
No, an ISIS fighter would be a stooge who was conned by older men into fighting and dying for Israel.
Why isn’t the U.S. government fighting ISIS with marketing and persuasion?
A conspiracy theorist would say the government isn’t using my or Adams’ ideas because there’s more money in war than in peace.
@Cernovich @paxdickinson I'll do it for half that!
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 14, 2016
If we defeated ISIS using a few videos (with a few hundred thousand dollars we could eliminate ISIS), then trillions (yes, that’s trillions with a t, or thousands-of-billions) of dollars would not go into the pockets of those who ensure that the “right people” get elected.
Indeed, if I worked for the U.S. War Machine, I’d keep publishing images making ISIS look like it was made of ferocious and dangerous men, as that would attract bored men to leave their couches and go onto their own hero’s journey.
Again, though, it would be a conspiracy theory to suggest that our elected officials (who love America and put public service above getting elected) and billionaires like George Soros (who fund our selfless public servants) would ever want ISIS to grow.
Fortunately the power of Gorilla Mindset is not a conspiracy theory; it’s real.